


Dreaming

by carolc24



Category: Deltarune (Video Game)
Genre: Burnout - Freeform, Depression, Emetophobia, Gen, Homesickness, Hospitalization, Implied Suicide Attempt, Isolation, college!asriel, drabble i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 08:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18311798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolc24/pseuds/carolc24
Summary: Asriel's been at college for a month.  Things aren't going well.  He thinks of home.





	Dreaming

His phone buzzes. Biology starts in ten minutes. He turns the alarm off. He hasn’t been to a single class the entire semester. He considered it once or twice, hovering outside the building, imagining what the teacher would say to a kid he’s never seen before suddenly coming to class. He wasn’t brave enough. It was too late for him.

He looks around. He’s wandered around the city almost every day (or night, when he sleeps through the day), finding new places to sit and watch the world go by. It’s louder than he’s used to, but he relishes the anonymity of a big city. At home, he couldn’t break the rules and get away with it. Any unusual movements, and someone would see him and tell his mother. No detours to the convenience store across town on the way to choir practice, no skipping out on cross country to go to the next town over and see a movie, no missing church to comfort his sibling. Everything scheduled, everything planned out and approved by Mom. Now there’s no structure, no rules, no enforcement, no one to tell him what to do, so of course he’s falling apart.

The weird thing is, he isn’t even sure if he likes it better at college. He doesn’t feel sad, not exactly, but everything feels distant and unreal, like he’s dreaming. He can do whatever he wants, and that’s freeing, but he’s also failing. Maybe he never learned to do things for himself at home, or maybe he just needs his family in a way he never realized before. Kris got teased all the time for relying on him for everything, but he was the one who relied on them, and Mom and Dad, and everyone else, to tell him what to do and how to be.

He finds a coffee shop with outdoor seating and orders a hot chocolate. Even here, he can see the changing colors and smell the decaying leaves. He thinks about Kris, who fixates on little things, filling their pockets with rocks and leaves and trying to touch everything they see. He thinks he can understand them a little better now. Everything in the world feels more strange and beautiful now that he takes the time to look properly. And maybe the world is leaving him behind, and maybe that’s okay, because it seems to be doing fine without him.

The hot chocolate arrives in a heavy teacup, not in a mug like at QC’s. There are no marshmallows, either. He’s ordered hot chocolate from other cafes and normally it’s too watery. But maybe if he went home now, and ordered a hot chocolate from the diner, it would taste watery to him too. Maybe he’s the one who’s changed. He imagines going home to his family and doing all the things they used to do, and finding that he feels distant even from them. Or finding that it’s as wonderful as he remembers, and being so afraid to spoil it that he never comes home again, so his family never finds out what a failure he really is.

He doesn’t know what will happen when he visits home next week. He talks to Mom and Dad over the phone pretty often. He’s gotten good at lying, a necessary skill he picked up as a teenager. But his family is also good at lying, so he isn’t sure if he trusts their constant repetitions of “oh, things are wonderful here!” Kris hasn’t spoken to him at all, either because they’re still furious with him for leaving or they just have nothing to say to him. He’s afraid that Kris would pretend to be okay. They never do that with him. But maybe they’ll shut him out, now that he’s betrayed them.

He hopes Kris is okay, wherever they are.

He takes a sip. It tastes wonderful. His throat tightens.

**Author's Note:**

> if you think any of this isn't me projecting then you're mistaken. also I can't believe this is my first deltarune fic lol
> 
> come talk to me at @uselessundertalefacts on tumblr, if you like!


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